


Kinship

by tryslora



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Were-Creatures, WereCoyote
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 23:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She finds him in the graveyard, sitting with his back to a gravestone, his knees bent and elbows propped against them, head in his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kinship

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after episode 3x14 of Teen Wolf and contains spoilers, of a sort, for things in that episode.
> 
> As always, I do not own the characters or world of Teen Wolf, but I like to play with them.

She finds him in the graveyard, sitting with his back to a gravestone, his knees bent and elbows propped against them, head in his hands. His long fingers thread through his hair, pushing the bangs up in a chaotic way. It makes her smile because it feels like a tiny bit of kinship, and oddly makes her long to groom him properly.

She stops where she is, not sure how to approach. Her body is awkward and frail, strange and wrapped in an uncomfortable new second skin. Everything is overwhelming, from the sounds that are muffled and odd to the bright colors that she can see, and the way that scents are muted but still more than she feels like she ought to be able to smell while walking on two legs.

It is tempting to drop to her knees and let the coyote take her back, but she can’t do that, not when she’s only just found this world again.

She takes a hesitant step forward, and he looks up, amber eyes wide and startled. “Malia?” he asks, voice lilting over her name.

She nods once, and when he crooks a finger she slowly crosses the distance between them and folds herself to kneel on the ground, facing him.

“I’m Stiles,” he says. He goes silent then, although his body is active, fingers tip-tapping against his shins where they wrap around his legs. Even without words, he has language that screams curiosity and interest and strangely withheld energy that brims with patience.

She doesn’t know what to think of him. She blinks slowly, her head tilted as she regards him.

He smiles slightly, sorrow wafting off of him in gentle waves. “I’m sorry about your mom,” he murmurs. “And your sister. If I’d known what the doll meant, I never would have moved it.” His gaze falls to the vase next to his hip, butted up against the stone, and she nods, guessing at the words unsaid.

“Thank you,” she whispers. Her voice is a shock to her every time she uses it, so different from yips and whines and sharp howls. It rasps slightly in her throat, and it is lower than she remembers in the distant recesses of her mind.

“There’s no—”

“There is,” she interrupts him. He goes still when her eyes flash, and she lowers her gaze, not wanting to scare him. “You reminded them that I was _me_ ,” she tells the dirt beneath her knees. She can’t say that she was _human_ because she doesn’t feel right with that word, not yet. “You reminded them that I was other. That I wasn’t just.” The sentence has no finish, it just _is_ , as close as she can get to expressing herself in a language she’s heard in distant whispers for years now. She risks a glance up, peering from beneath the fall of her hair across her face.

“My dad’s still getting used to things,” Stiles says quickly, one hand turning over, the fingers curled slightly as he gestures. “He believes, but it’s a lot. After werewolves, kanima, alphas, the darach… a girl trapped as a coyote was just one more thing, I guess. We didn’t have proof… but Scott believed. So I believed.”

“You reminded me that I was me,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I am.”

“We can help you with that.” Stiles rolls to his knees, ending up in front of her, his hands reaching for hers. They are larger, his fingers wrapping around hers and holding on with a kind of contact she can barely remember. He waits until she looks at him, meets his gaze to find him watching her, open and honest, his heart steady and true. “Scott—he’s my best friend, and he’s the alpha that howled you back to humanity. We’re… we’re not always exactly sure what we’re doing, I have to say that, but Scott’s _good_ and he’ll have your best interests at heart.”

“And you?” 

“Me?” His brow furrows in confusion. “I’m not going to hurt you, Malia. None of us are going to hurt you.”

“Will you help me?” She looks at the stone behind him, her mind struggling to form words out of the letters that she recognizes. She cannot read the name, but she remembers how years work, and how much time has passed. She can guess that this is someone he has lost. “You understand me.”

“I make good guesses,” Stiles murmurs. “You can trust me.”

She inhales on instinct, tasting the air around them. There isn’t enough, so she leans in closer, nose pressed to the pulse point in his throat when she sucks the air in again. She can taste the bitter remnants of cologne and a hint of cinnamon and maple syrup. There is no lie on his skin, nothing that wants to hurt her. Only a faint increase in his heart and the way he stays perfectly still without flinching under her attention.

She licks a quick stripe, laughing when he finally moves, pushing at her until she nuzzles his hands and sits back. “I trust you,” she says.

“I think we’re going to have to work on helping you relate to people in a human way,” Stiles says dryly, but she can hear the soft laughter under the words. She likes the sound.

“It’s been a while,” she says, and she manages to keep her expression sober and serious for a moment before the smile breaks free.

It feels so strange to bare her teeth like this and mean kinship rather than enemy. But he gives her a smile in return, and she can feel it in the way his body leans towards her, the way he sits back and pats the space next to him.

She has been on her own for so long, it is strange to settle in and fit herself against his side.

It also feels good.

She inhales softly, and on the exhale she relaxes, letting someone else take her weight and offering the same in return as he leans on her. She smells sorrow again, and she reaches for his hand uncertainly, letting him tangle them both together. Connecting them.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and she has no words to reply. All she has is here, and now, and trust. It’s all she needs.

**Author's Note:**

> It's more of a scene than a story, but it's been stuck in my head since Tuesday morning, so here it is. When I watched the episode a second time (with the teen and husband), I noticed again that Stiles kept reiterating that the coyote was a girl, that she was _human_ and trying to get people to see her that way. And in my head, Malia wanted to say something after that, so this is it.
> 
> If you want to find me on tumblr, I'm at [tryslora](http://tryslora.tumblr.com). Come visit!


End file.
